To the Editor: Estimating dementia prevalence at the local level in the United States remains challenging. At the same time, policymakers in local municipalities stand to benefit from understanding dementia burden in their communities to effectively scale and target programs and services. In 2021, we published a paper describing and implementing a method that produces dementia prevalence estimates based on public data sources and that can be adapted to provide estimates for any US jurisdiction: Bennett, E.E., Kwan, A., Gianattasio, K.Z., Engelman, B., Dowling, N.M. and Power, M.C., 2021. Estimation of dementia prevalence at the local level in the United States. Alzheimer's uses publicly available census data; accounts for variation by sex, age, and race/ethnicity; and can be applied to any locality given sufficient demographic data. However, we ignore impacts of other important predictors (including education and comorbidities) and base our estimates on what may be dated data given our reliance on published prevalence statistics. This method also complements other used to estimate dementia prevalence. Notably, dementiadatahub.org now provides the prevalence of diagnosed dementia derived from Medicare claims data at the national, state, and county levels. While these data reflect true counts of diagnosed dementia in a community, a large proportion of persons living with dementia remain undiagnosed. As such, prevalence estimates currently available on dementiadatahub.org are related to but distinct from true (i.e., diagnosed + undiagnosed) dementia prevalence. We hope that by correcting our original oversight and providing these additional resources to the public, we can render our method more usable for the purpose of providing actionable estimates of dementia prevalence to a variety of potential users. Best, Ms. Erin Bennett and Dr. Melinda Power This work was funded by a grant from District of Columbia Department of Health to MCP (CHA2020-000024). The funders had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication. Melinda C. Power reports research grants from the United States (US) National Institutes of Health, US Department of Defense, and the Prince Georges County Department of Family Services. Erin E. Bennett reports no conflicts of interest.
Bennett et al. (Thu,) studied this question.